Chapter 230: Chapter 1: Information Disturbance
After formally starting the game, it was time to choose a starting character.
The black silhouettes of four characters appeared before her: [Swordsman], [Martial Monk], [Swordmaster], and [Abnormal People].
The Swordsman started with two light longswords and some miscellaneous small items. He was also skilled in using some Daoist Techniques, making him a character with well-rounded overall strength.
The Martial Monk came with a heavy long-staff. His constitution and initial damage were the highest, making him very durable. His only downside was his lack of agility. For those confident in their skills, he would be an extremely powerful character.
The Swordmaster’s silhouette was slender, appearing female. She started with a long saber, was skilled in Medicine Technique, and could both heal and apply poison. She could also craft Enhancing Ointment and Pills with various effects.
The Abnormal People character started with a random heavy weapon, had full face customization, and possessed high initial free Attributes for self-directed stat allocation and development. This class also came with some special Talents. However, the Abnormal People class had no background, making some special dialogue options unavailable.
’Isn’t that just Zhou Buyi’s trio and me?’ Su Zhou thought to himself. Shao Shuangyue didn’t hesitate, directly choosing the first character, the Swordsman. She even explained, "Balance is what you need most for a first playthrough. I’ll use him to see what kind of insidious traps that old bastard has set in this game."
The next part of the game was quite standard—a small team marching through a blizzard encounters an Abnormal Person of mysterious origin, and after a brief disagreement, a fight breaks out immediately.
"Very realistic." Munching on melon seeds, Su Zhou nodded slightly. He thought, ’So information disturbance can be replicated to this degree? Incredible... Ah, I’ve been turned into a tutorial level.’
Onscreen, before the enemy Abnormal Person attacked, the character Shao Shuangyue was controlling would receive a prompt: how to draw their sword to block, how to use Magic to turn the tables when at a disadvantage, how to execute a combo attack with teammates... and then the Abnormal Person was knocked down.
Su Zhou was instantly dumbfounded, the melon seeds falling from his hand. "Huh? I lost? Oh, not knocked down, just knocked back... but when was I ever knocked back? Didn’t I just stand there like a training dummy and take on Zhou Buyi’s entire group by myself?"
Of course, neither Shao Shuangyue nor Shao Qiming could comprehend Su Zhou’s shock. Both were focused on the game, not saying a word.
As a veteran player of the Dark Wolf series, Shao Shuangyue’s gaming skills were actually decent, even though she hadn’t started Cultivation yet. Soon, she completed a series of tutorials and began clearing the map of Demon Soldiers hidden in the forest.
A different starting choice would mean a different progression. At this point, Su Zhou understood. If Shao Shuangyue had chosen the Abnormal People starting class, it would probably have recreated the scenario where he took on the whole group by himself. It was very likely that each different starting class represented a different story path.
Choosing the Swordsman, modeled after Zhou Buyi, led to what was probably the most classic storyline: leading the others to clear out mobs and fight Demon Generals... Of course, the Demon Soldiers would resurrect. If not finished off with a Fire Attribute attack, the resurrected Demon Soldiers could launch a surprise attack.
The game progressed quickly, and soon Shao Shuangyue began to take on the first Demon General, Red Land.
Then, in the middle of the fight, Shao Shuangyue was poisoned and died. She was so overwhelmed by the Red Land Demon General’s ferocious attacks that she could only block and dodge. But while blocking, she discovered she’d been poisoned. With no time to drink a potion, she died just like that.
[DEATH].
"So it’s a timed boss. You either prepare potions beforehand or burst him down within a minute."
Red text appeared in the center of the screen, but Shao Shuangyue wasn’t too bothered. Honestly, only dying on the first proper major boss was already quite good and proved that her skills were exquisite among ordinary people.
But Su Zhou was still quite annoyed. "What’s going on? I’m a handsome, elegant, and graceful young man! Besides the National Preceptor and the Emperor being a bit tough, wasn’t everyone else a one-handed cakewalk? How come in this game, it takes four people to fight such a weakling, and it’s a tough battle every single time?!"
"Something’s wrong with this game!"
’Am I so bad that even Brother Zhou can’t stand to watch?’ The heavy atmosphere coming from his side was so palpable that even Shao Shuangyue could feel it. She broke into a cold sweat. ’It can’t be that bad, can it? I’ve only died seven or eight times from the start—it’s not strange for a normal person to die dozens of times!’
But how could Shao Shuangyue know the thoughts of Su Zhou, who had cleared it all in one life?
Soon, after being stuck for a while, the story progression started up again. After being knocked back, the Red Land Demon General didn’t die but retreated. The protagonist’s party leveled up and was about to face a three-part Demon General battle where the enemies would also be at full strength.
At this point, it was obvious the difficulty had exceeded Shao Shuangyue’s current abilities. In other words, she was stuck.
"This Demon General in red armor uses poison. Get behind it and hit its head to destroy the source of its poison gas."
"For this giant centipede Demon General, just focus on dodging. It runs out of stamina quickly. Use Daoist Techniques to wear it down bit by bit."
"This Demon General uses a gun. Watch out for its ranged attacks."
At this moment, Su Zhou, full of confidence, began guiding Shao Shuangyue through the fight with the air of an expert. "Temporarily switch to the Abnormal Person as your main character. Doesn’t his Talent give him poison immunity? Use him to kill this Red Land Demon General first..."
"So you have played this before, Brother Zhou." Hearing his advice, Shao Shuangyue had a moment of realization. "I knew it. There’s no way you’d be this bored otherwise." She followed Su Zhou’s guided strategy... and proceeded to die again.
The truly-that-bored Su Zhou suddenly had question marks appearing over his head. "Huh? How is she still getting poisoned? Her health is just dropping a little slower. Isn’t it supposed to be poison immunity?"
"Whoa, why isn’t Red Land getting launched? Does he have super armor?!"
Feeling like she’d been tricked, Shao Shuangyue said, sounding a little wronged, "Brother Zhou, Demon Generals are large units. They can’t be launched. Only small mobs get launched into the air by an uppercut attack."
—But back then, I could launch him into the air and knock him back several meters with just a casual spear thrust!
"How can this be?!" At that moment, Su Zhou felt like an author taking a reading comprehension test on his own article and getting a zero. It was awful. "It shouldn’t be like this! It just shouldn’t!"
However, by now, Su Zhou had more or less figured out how the information disturbance manifested.
’It’s very likely that the inspiration appearing in the mind of the corresponding Apocalypse really does restore most of the information from that world. It might even include a lot of information that not even the locals know.’
On the surface, Su Zhou was still watching Shao Shuangyue die over and over, but internally, he was thinking, ’It’s just that, because of the medium, many parts of the story and events are rewritten... On the bright side, some bosses probably aren’t as strong as they are in the game. They just needed to be made stronger for the sake of game progression.’
’But on the other hand, it’s also possible that there are extremely powerful characters who were forcibly killed off by the game’s plot.’
’If I ever transmigrate to an Otherworld in the future that has a real-world adaptation like this, I might still be able to reference the power levels of other people. But for the strength of enemy Leaders during the game’s story, I’m afraid I’ll still need to gather intel on-site.’
